Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(08-08-2009, 06:24 AM)hansenderek Wrote: [ -> ]somebody make a random conversation...say anything...im so effing bored rite now cuz my dolphin is being dum..lol

but seriously its so boring rite now..

quack

So I gave Vanquished a try. This more or less describes my experience.



Doom 2016 wants you to play aggressively, pushing rapidly into the enemies and using melee a lot, but players are used to call of duty and other shooters where aggression is punished, and being careful and deliberate are rewarded. So, the designers masterfully directed the game itself to push players toward the best way to play. If you hang back and play it defensively, the game has enemies that run you down and overwhelm you, you can't just stay in one spot shooting enemies from safety. Furthermore, if you do play the way it wants, aggressively with melee, than the game showers you in rewards for doing so, with health and ammo pickups more or less being exclusive to the showy melee takedowns. It is a fantastic bit of design. Doom 2016 is admittedly not perfect: apparently most players don't actually finish Doom 2016 because the high aggression play style becomes tiring and repetitive throughout the game, but the way the game directs the player, the guns and shooting, and the enemies are all masterfully done. Plus its kinesthetics are AMAZING, everything pops and crackles and splurts responsively to the player. It just feels good to play.

Vanquished gets all of those things wrong. In fact, I'd say it's an excellent example of what Doom 2016 would have been like if they hadn't mastered those elements.

Vanquished is a 3rd person cover shooter, and if you don't include it's unique mechanic, it's not a very good one. It's a shooter, so you spend the entire game time shooting guns, but they are extremely unsatisfying to use. The kinesthetics of the guns are remarkably poor, with quiet and boring sounds, zero bass (I have a big subwoofer please use it!), and zero screen shake or interesting effects, they just feel dull and uninteresting to fire. Everything just feels like playing laser tag. Potentially this was done to reduce fatigue since you'll be shooting endlessly throughout the game, but it makes what you are doing the entire game feel bad, and that is never a good choice. The game gives way more emphasis on the music and explosions in the world, not that they sound very good either. The walking speed is a dreadfully slow jog, with no sprint or anything interesting to break it up, and it has the same old cover mechanics we've seen time and time again. It's also has a very bad case of late aughts brown; everything just looks indistinct, vague, and dull. All in all, playing Vanquished as a typical 3rd person cover shooter is a pretty bad time.

What Vanquish does that sets it apart is the boost mechanic. The protagonist's suit has an energy bar, and you can use that energy to slide forward at speed. While doing so, the game goes into slow motion, giving you time to steer and shoot at enemies while sliding. It is unique and very interesting, and definitely the best part of the game. Ideally, you could use that for a faster paced shooting, where you zip out of cover, go behind enemy cover, shoot the enemies, then hide behind their cover, and repeat. And you could use it to zip behind an enemy and shoot a weak spot before they could turn around. It has a lot of potential, it's a very clever mechanic! Too bad it doesn't use it well. It doesn't really encourage you to use boost at all, and actually discourages it much of the time. I'll just list the design problems one by one.

• Enemies HURT in this game. You'll die pretty fast if you go out of cover, even on the lowest difficulty levels. This dramatically discourages aggressive play, and rewards caution and hiding behind cover. You know, the typical 3rd person cover shooter mechanics that Vanquished does badly.
  
  
• You have to become vulnerable to use the boost mechanic, that's kind of the point of it and how it is interesting. But it runs out SO fast, you don't have time to zip out behind enemy cover, shoot some enemies, and zip back into your cover. So if you don't take out all of the enemies before the boost runs out, you'll either be exposed while taking out the rest of the enemies, or retreat (at a slow jog) back to your old cover. Or you could just, stay in cover and shoot them all at range and take them out even faster. Which is, again, boring and unfun, but way more efficient.
  
  
• Vanquish has sniper rifles. Why? Sniper rifles are all about hanging back and taking out enemies from extreme distance, that's the antithesis of this game's best mechanic. And worst part is, they are extremely effective. That's directly encouraging the player to play the game to its weaknesses rather than its strengths. Ok, I guess there is one reason though, if a player is playing on a higher difficulty level and is struggling, it's a good way to take out some goons before you rush in. It still encourages hanging back and proceeding cautiously, however.
  
  
• Melee is terrible. Melee is laggy and very easy to miss, and a single melee attack uses up your entire boost bar. And of course that means you have to *have* a full boost bar, so you can forget about zipping in to a group of enemies and meleeing them all to death in a super aggressive style ala Doom 2016. The only use for melee is if you are, again, hiding behind cover playing the game in the worst possible way, and if an enemy approaches, you can OHKO them. That's it. Which has its uses, don't get me wrong, but it reinforces hiding and shooting from safety as the best way to play, despite it being boring.
  
  
• My favorite weapon in my play time was the laser. It uses the suit's energy, what you need for boost, instead of bullets, and it tears through enemies like crazy, with the best DPS I saw of any guns in the game. But you can forget about using it while doing boost, as firing it while boosting drains the suit's energy supply super fast. So the best gun in the game works best if you hang back behind cover and don't boost, which encourages- you get the idea.
  
  
• Using the boost to get behind enemies is one of the most promising potential uses of the boost mechanic, but Vanquish never really uses it. I imagine some bosses, especially later in the game, require doing this, but in my two hours with the game, I never encountered an enemy where zipping behind them was useful, or even was a thing. There were these big bad bullet sponges that I would have LOVED to zip behind and take them down quickly with aggressive play, which would have been a great reward for players pushing the mechanics. Yet there was no weakness on their backs at all. In fact, they turn and look at you as fast as you can move even with boost and slowmo so you literally can't get behind them. Good job game.
  
  
• Mouse and keyboard plus high resolutions empower hanging back in safety way more than I think the devs considered when they initially made the game. Playing this on a modern system at 4k60 with a steam controller, I can see and shoot enemies clear across the arena with ease. Why would I rush in when I can take them all out from one spot way in the back? But at 720p30 with a tiny joystick, it would be WAY harder to do that, which would encourage the player to move up more. This is a game design problem, not a "you should be playing the game as intended!" problem. When the player is able to play the game better and it reveals weaknesses in your game's design, that's not the player's fault. Also this is an official PC port so, saying it is not intended doesn't apply here. And the game has a sniper rifle to work around the aiming at distance limitations of the 360, sooooo, you know.
  

All combined, this game actively encourages playing the game in the way that the game is really bad at, while discouraging the best mechanics the game has. The whole time I was playing it, I was trying to wring the good mechanics out of it, which are there, boost is a really great mechanic, but the game fought me the whole time. I'd use boost and die over and over, but if I hung back and played the game boringly, I breezed through it trivially. But it was just so booooring! Eventually I just gave up, it wasn't worth fighting with the game to get the good bits out of it. And that's very disappointing to me. After playing tons of bad shooting in the old Uncharted games, I wanted to play with some good shooting mechanics, to cleanse my palette a bit. I was completely confident that Platinum would nail the shooting mechanics in Vanquished, and it would be the other bits, story, pacing, etc, that had the potential to disappoint me. And yea, they disappointed me, it is an old Platinum game. The story is camp in every bit the old platinum way that I really do not like. But the shooting mechanics are also pretty bad, all because the game didn't have faith in its best mechanic. Its shooting is better than old uncharted, don't get me wrong: there aren't bullet sponges (beside the specific bullet sponge enemy I mentioned earlier) and most enemies go down quickly, there is a lot more enemy variety, enemy AI seems alright (I saw some flanking and things), guns are very mechanically different from eachother, etc etc. But it's not that much better, and Vanquish is ALL shooting, without any of the charm or platformy puzzlish diversions of Uncharted.

Honestly I'd like to return Vanquish. I have returned two Steam games EVER, so it isn't common for me, it's just, I didn't enjoy my time with it, and I didn't learn anything from it. I regret buying it. I never felt that way with Uncharted. Even the really old ones like Uncharted 1 and 2, playing them was an interesting bit of old game spelunking and analysis that I'm glad I did. I learned a lot from Uncharted! Plus they are genuinely charming, and I giggled more than a few times at their writing. But Vanquish is just another game that had an interesting mechanic, but didn't trust it and leaned on the familiar, undermining what made it interesting. I've seen that soooo many times. Plus it has nothing else going for it, to me at least. It's story, presentation, and everything else don't interest me at all. For me, it had no redeeming qualities.

So um, yea. This sucks. ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌

EDIT: The only thing that this game has that encourages aggressive play and the boost mechanic is scores. And this game has a robust scoring system, as is normal for a Platinum game. Scores aren't for me, hence me not mentioning it (honestly I forgot they were even there, it doesn't have anywhere near as good a scoring system as Astral Chain), but this game, like many Platinum games, has a very very high skill ceiling and the big numbers from that robust scoring system is the reward. I don't care about scoring systems, especially pure number ones like Vanquish has, and I only want to invest in getting really good at a game after I've fallen in love with it, which I certainly didn't with Vanquish. So yea, I don't really care about this. But it is worth noting that there is a motivator for using the game's interesting mechanic and playing aggressively, and it has given the game a lot of legs among the extreme hardcore. Also this kind of puts Vanquish in the pile of platinum games (like star fox zero) that are really great for the 0.0x% of players that absolutely master them inside and out, but are pretty not great for everyone else.

Wow... That's quite cruel...

I am getting a vibe here with those recent critics that Shooter's aren't exactly your favorite genre.

Vanquish is pretty fun actually. Of course, it isn't perfect (there are plenty of shooters which are way better), but I really appreciate the deviation from the "Call of Duty" formula, which at this point I am getting so extremely tired of that it should be illegal. That or anything Battle-Royale... The story's nothing super, but it's quite over the top, and I kinda liked that for a change of pace. I just don't think it was that bad as you make it sound. Sure, generic, a bit bland, slowish, or whatever you might throw against it. I would say it's good, just good, and not specifically bad. At the very least it didn't bore me to death... Which uhh... Is recently happening a lot for me since 2018... What's happening to the game industry? Why are all these games so generic and boring these past few years? Here's hoping that CyberPunk 2077 is going to blow my mind once again like with The Witcher 3.

I would have liked Doom (2016) if it wasn't that brutal. I mean, brutal in it's theme. It's something personal perhaps, but that mostly makes me avoid the game.

Perhaps the newer Wolfenstein games are something for you? Wolfenstein: The New Order should be the best of them. Or you could give Halo a chance now that it's finally on Steam as well. Serious Sam is a pretty solid arcade-like shooter. And uhh... The Half-Life titles are free-to-play for a few more weeks on Steams if you missed out on that (like me... I know... I know...).

But then again First/Third Person Shooters were never my primary genre. That's reserved for JRPG's or Action-Adventures.

My feelings on shooters is kind of mixed. I'm definitely not a shooter fan: I don't enjoy killing things or explosions, and I don't get any rush or thrill from destruction or power fantasies. Call of Duty bores me. Also I don't like bacon, I'm a REBEL! But I've enjoyed a lot of games that are shooters. I enjoy good mechanics, good stories, and other good bits of design, and that includes good shooting. All of the Half Life games, Deus Ex games, Mass Effect Andromeda with its Jedi Academy style leaping and gravity powers paired with good shooting, the new Tomb Raider games and their shooting, Metal Gear Solid games, Splatoon, on and on. Halo 1 was really good too, though I kind of fell out of the franchise when Halo 2 had that whole vista required thing and I never really got back into it, then the fanbase happened and... meh.

So yea, I enjoy some shooty games, even some pure shooters where you spend the whole game shooting things. But I can't stand bad shooting. It is so incredibly boring.

Also I agree with you about Doom 2016. The game is fantastically designed and has awesome music, but its themes and art and just, bweh, not for me. I would love a candy and rainbows mod for it, I'd totally play through the game if that exists. ....wait, maybe it does exist, I should do some googling.

Admentus Wrote:Vanquish is pretty fun actually.

Just to be clear, I'm not judging you or anyone else for liking Vanquish. It's never wrong or incorrect to have fun! ...ok unless it's a crime, then it's bad. Anyway, what I'm talking about in my post is all game design things, and I'm expressing my disappointing in the developers for making game design choices that frankly, don't make much sense. For me, those design failures prevent me from enjoying it, and I stopped playing the game. But if you enjoyed it, I'm kind of jealous actually. I paid $20 to enjoy Vanquish, and I didn't. I really wanted to have fun. That you enjoyed something you purchased is never a bad thing.

Admentus Wrote:Perhaps the newer Wolfenstein games are something for you?

Eehhh, the first of the new Wolfenstein games did that whole thing with difficulty and really put me off from the series. Like, in game design circles, it is used as an example of what not to do, and I completely agree. A game should never be insulting or obnoxious toward a player that chooses to use the game's provided options to get a better experience. Can you imagine if a game insulted the player for changing keyboard bindings? Or audio levels? It's just so dumb.

Admentus Wrote:Wow... That's quite cruel...

Looking over it again, I was too harsh on the story. Just because I don't like camp, doesn't mean that camp doesn't have its... camp of fans. And I honestly saw very little of the story, so I shouldn't blanketly say its story is bad. That was wrong of me. So, I've done some editing to tone down my criticisms of the story. It's not for me, but that's ok. I want to focus on the mechanic stuff anyway.

(02-21-2020, 07:46 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Halo 1 was really good too, though I kind of fell out of the franchise when Halo 2 had that whole vista required thing and I never really got back into it, then the fanbase happened and... meh.

The whole Game for Windows Live or whatever shitty service that was required before is no longer needed with the Steam release. It contains 6 Halo games in one package, but for now it's just Halo Reach that available for purchase. Halo 1 should be coming pretty soon, probably next month or so.

(02-21-2020, 07:46 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Just to be clear, I'm not judging you or anyone else for liking Vanquish. It's never wrong or incorrect to have fun! ...ok unless it's a crime, then it's bad. Anyway, what I'm talking about in my post is all game design things, and I'm expressing my disappointing in the developers for making game design choices that frankly, don't make any sense. For me, those design failures prevent me from enjoying it, and I stopped playing the game. But if you enjoyed it, I'm kind of jealous actually. I paid $20 to enjoy Vanquish, and I didn't. I really wanted to have fun. That you enjoyed something you purchased is never a bad thing.

Don't worry. I don't feel judged . It's always refreshing to see your perspective on games!

(02-21-2020, 07:46 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Eehhh, the first of the new Wolfenstein games did that whole thing with difficulty and really put me off from the series. Like, in game design circles, it is used as an example of what not to do, and I completely agree. A game should never be insulting or obnoxious toward a player that chooses to use the game's provided options to get a better experience. Can you imagine if a game insulted the player for changing keyboard bindings? Or audio levels? It's just so dumb.

Ohh sure. I can certainly agree the Wolfenstein games aren't perfect either. Far from it. The thing that just appealed to me was the old-school gameplay. Ya know, Health and Armor pickups while being a run-and-gun style of game. Other than that, it has plenty of flaws. But in today's industry, everyone wants the next Battle-Royale or Cover-Based COD shooter... So yeah... There isn't much solid choice. The New Colossus wasn't exactly that reassuring...

(02-21-2020, 07:46 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Looking over it again, I was too harsh on the story. Just because I don't like camp, doesn't mean that camp doesn't have its... camp of fans. And I honestly saw very little of the story, so I shouldn't blanketly say its story is bad. That was wrong of me. So, I've done some editing to tone down my criticisms of the story. It's not for me, but that's ok. I want to focus on the mechanic stuff anyway.

Nah, you weren't that harsh that it bothered me or anything. You should never apologize if you had a bad experience with a game. I definitely agree that there is a level of mediocrity to Vanquish. I was just lucky enough that it didn't annoy me so much that I wasn't motivated to go through with it. There is a lot worse I can play. So for me, it ended up being better than most of the generic games did recently. I am not the biggest fan of Platinum actually. They have some amazing idea's on their design but somehow fail to completely entice me with it. Take NieR:Automata for example. Ignoring the poor PC port attempt (which is infamously bad), it had an amazing and explosive start which gave me fantastic hope for the whole game itself, but ultimately ended up being more shallow than I expected. Irrationally the game was at it's when best it was linear. The open world just didn't do it. And the story didn't make much sense to me either, even after all three playthroughs. The final credits sequence was supposed to be emotional... But it kinda left me with a void of what was going on... That could be just me...

Oh hey, I picked up Vanquish for $5 on Steam last year. Never buy anything on Steam unless there's a sale

Haven't played it beyond the tutorial. Backlogs of games. Even after 100+ hours, I'm just now finishing up Dragon Quest XI (Definitive Edition). Now for FE: Three Houses (another 100+ hour game).

(02-22-2020, 01:05 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Oh hey, I picked up Vanquish for $5 on Steam last year. Never buy anything on Steam unless there's a sale

Ohh yeah. That's for sure. Ya can't anywhere without a sale. I mostly prefer to buy from GOG.com through, since I like to actually really own my games.

(02-22-2020, 01:05 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Even after 100+ hours, I'm just now finishing up Dragon Quest XI (Definitive Edition).

Yeah... About Dragon Quest XI (Steam version... Which still isn't updated. The game is generic as it could be... Yeah... XI is a solid improvement for the west. If ya wanna play Dragon Quest you should definitely start from XI... Even that being said, it's just way too generic... They really tried their best to appeal to the western market, they added icons, voice acting, a great presented story and what not else, but if simply isn't accessible enough. There is just sooooooooo much text.

Enter a fight? Text! Pick up an item? Text! Dish out damage? Text! Get damaged? Text! TEXT TEXT TEXT! I GET IT! OK! It's just overwhelming how it brings down the pacing... And I could stand it for a while... Until I got into the endgame. Your text nightmares will start to get intensified there! Since. You. Will. Need. To. Grind. A. Lot. And I mean really a lot. And just not grind monsters... Grind metal monsters, since the XP isn't worth otherwise. But that's just the start of it... Because these metal critters do nothing else than avoid being hit and running away. Yeah... Have fun! I couldn't beat the true end just because of the extreme fatigue and tediousness. I wasn't worth it anymore for me.

Ohh... And the game is extremely linear. And I mean really linear. Linear games aren't really an issue for me... But Dragon Quest XI proved me wrong in that. It's cranked it up all the way to 11.

But wait... There's more to complain about. What about those side quests where you have to beat a boss with specific pep powers. That's just extremely cruel. You really have to abuse the system and put party members away once they reach a pepped up state, just to switch them back once you are about to deal the final blow... Assuming it kills the monster of course.

I absolutely love it that all monsters are just haphazardly placed around with no true meaning to it. If you want to, you can skip through most of the encounters. There's no real reason to fight monsters on your way... Wait! Except you have to grind, otherwise you run into those XP walls in the form of mandatory bosses, which means a lot of grinding as usual, when if you actually did a decent job of fighting all the encounters on your way. Hurray, such fun!

This is just my time to state I rather do I math test.

Sadly... There really aren't a lot of games that are worth playing. The majority of games, movies and series is just an overwhelming mediocre. But I can at least live with that. Mediocre I can stand, but being generic as hell I can not. And Dragon Quest XI is about as generic as it can. Which is a shame, because even if the story itself is as generic and cliche as it can be, it is at least presented with quality, and that's probably the best I have to say about the game.

So... I ended up stating generic quite a lot.

There are only a handful of developers and games which truly inspire me and have me anxiously waiting for sequels. While not the biggest of companies out there, Nihon Falcom actually manage to excite me with every new game they release (provided they get localized eventually), which isn't something that really happens often. And the weird thing about it, the company has about 62 employees and barely have the funds for high-end graphics, but even with that at their disposal manage to amaze me more than anything a AAA-studio would make (Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard, EA Games, Square Enix). In fact those Triple A studios have the most potential to come with yet another disappointment. Through I have to be honest and say that Ubisoft is at least worse of them. Microsoft can make some great stuff happen as well, which they proved for sure with their Age of Empires II remaster. And I got nothing but respect for Project CD Red. Blizzard is without a doubt the worst of them all. I had been a longtime fan of Blizzard, but that's never going to happen as of now anymore.

At least I am still glad that Nintendo is still true to their design, even while constantly wondering why they are still left in the previous century at times.

End of rant.

Admentus Wrote:The game is generic as it could be..

It's interesting that even DQ fans admit this. I think it goes all the way back to DQ's origins, which is based on old-school D&D, which was pretty generic even in the 80s. I think a lot of people like DQ as "comfort food". Not really a delicacy, but it's there when you need something familiar.

Admentus Wrote:Enter a fight? Text! Pick up an item? Text! Dish out damage? Text! Get damaged? Text! TEXT TEXT TEXT! I GET IT! OK! It's just overwhelming how it brings down the pacing...

This is every DQ game ever. It's been that way since the NES. Not saying it's a good thing, just that it hasn't changed a bit in over 30 years. I'm sure it's annoying to newcomers, but this isn't my first DQ rodeo. I mostly ignore it, and you kind of have to when you play on the highest battle speed.

Admentus Wrote:What about those side quests where you have to beat a boss with specific pep powers.

Yeah, screw those side-quests. I did like 2 and said whatever. In general, I think side-quests are pointless. I don't do them unless 1) it has something interesting to reveal story-wise or character-wise or 2) I need it for Ultimate Mega Equipment. I did like 5 side-quests and gave up. The game is long enough as it is, excluding the Post Game (which added an additional 20% playtime in my case).

About Vanquish, I found the plot, the music and the characters very meh, but the shooting mechanics and the variety of enemies with vast different AIs deviated enough from the typical shooters of that era that made me really enjoy it. However, when I started mastering the game, it... ended? Meh, if I recall correctly, it took me less than 6 hours to finish the campaign. Yes, yes, there were challenges that I unlocked and I could always replay the campaign on a higher difficulty but then there would be nothing new, so I gave up after finishing the campaign once.

I still hold good impressions of Vanquish, though, despite all of its flaws. I would be definitely interested on a sequel, with a longer campaign and more interesting plot, that would be sufficient to make me even consider pre-ordering it (and I'm someone who rarely buy games on pre-order or at launch)...

mbc07 Wrote:However, when I started mastering the game, it... ended?

That's more or less the norm for Platinum, at least until recently. They designed their games for multiple playthroughs, which meant that players were going to be bad at the game for their whole first experience with the game. It's not bad design or anything, but it's not my favorite. I was happily surprised by Astral Chain's length allowing mastery in *one* playthrough. Much more my style!